“Joseph will try to find out what happened,” she agreed. “And if someone is responsible, who it is.”
“I see.” He picked up his fork, but he did not eat any more.
“Are you afraid it is someone you know?” she asked.
He looked up quickly. “Do you know?”
“No. But that is what occurs to me.”
“Hadrian?” There was a wealth of misery in his face, as if he himself were guilty of it.
She smothered her surprise, turning her gasp into a cough. It had never occurred to her that Hadrian’s very clear dislike was anything more than a proficient soldier’s contempt for a man who did not understand the army or its rules and conventions, and had no genuine respect for its men.
“Surely he didn’t dislike him sufficiently to do that?” She tried to believe it, remembering the loathing in Hadrian’s eyes as he had watched Prentice leave when he had come to see Cullingford a few days ago. Cullingford had given him written permission to pass almost anywhere he wanted. It was a defeat for Hadrian, who had told him such a thing was impossible.
A sane man did not kill for such a reason. Where was sanity here when a score of men could be killed in a night, for no worthwhile reason at all? Everything was exactly the same the day after, most times not a yard lost, nor gained. And it was all meaningless mud anyway, poisoned and violated beyond any conceivable use.
Yet looking at Cullingford’s face, she saw the fear in his eyes was perfectly real—he believed Hadrian could be guilty, and it hurt him, with grief for the fact, and fear of what it would mean in the future.
She made herself smile. “I don’t think so,” she said with a conviction she imitated from him, thinking of him assuring injured men, lying with supreme ease. “He’s too military to do anything so rash. He’d have had to leave his own post. He wouldn’t do that on the night of a raid.”
He smiled back at her, forcing himself to relax as well, let go of it as an act of will. “No. It was a foolish thought.” He picked up his glass and sipped the rough wine. “I didn’t like Eldon, but his death is . . . painful. I cannot return to England for some time, with things as they are. My sister Abby is a widow, and she is going to find this very hard.”
She became aware of how acutely it embarrassed him to admit to such emotions. “You would like me to take some message to her?” she asked, to save him having to.
Then she was afraid she had presumed!
He looked at her with luminous candor. “Please? You know what grief is like. You could speak to her without being sentimental, which she would hate. Loss needs honesty. Nerys, my wife, would not . . .” He stopped, unable to finish the sentence without committing a betrayal. “She does not know a great deal of the reality of war.” His hand fiddled with the small salt spoon on the table. “There is no need to harrow people with details of violence and suffering they cannot help. And certainly not of . . . of your brother’s suspicions. It would add . . . to Abby’s pain. She needs to think of Eldon as what he might have become, not what he was.”
His words were very spare, little more than a sketch, but she saw in it an outline of loneliness that hurt too much to acknowledge. What part of his life did he share with Nerys if he could not tell her of the horror he saw, the fear, the overwhelming physical discomfort of the trenches; or the jokes, the friendship, the sacrifice and the sheer kindness as well? Now of all times, what was there left of meaning in the trivia of life, the things that floated past the windows of the soul but never touched the inner being, pictures without substance.
“Of course I’ll go and see Mrs. Prentice,” she said quickly. “I can tell her as much or as little as you like. I can say I met him several times, and that he was dedicated to his job, and brave enough to do it without fear for his own safety. I can tell her what it is like here—or conceal it, as you think best.”
“Thank you.” He broke a piece of bread off in his fingers and ate it slowly. He looked at her with intense gravity. “I shall leave it to your judgment what you say to her. I . . . I haven’t seen her much lately. I . . .” He gave a shrug so slight his shoulders did not even pull his uniform. “I should have given her more time, especially after Allen died.” He made no excuses.
“I can go the day after tomorrow,” she offered. “If you give me the address and perhaps a letter to explain to her who I am, so she does not think I am simply intruding.”
“Of course.”
She thought he wanted to say more, but he was uncomfortable enough with asking her for help, and he was torn between loyalties. Everyone felt guilty for disliking the dead, especially when they were young, and the grief for them was something you ought to share, and couldn’t.
“Thank you,” he said softly. “It will make a difference to her.”
They finished the meal without speaking again, but it was companionable, as if understanding made further words redundant.
Matthew closed the door behind him and looked at the four men sitting around the long, polished table. One of them was his own superior at the Secret Intelligence Service, Calder Shearing; another was the head of British Naval Intelligence, Admiral “Blinker” Hall, white-haired, fresh-faced, with the nervous habit that had given him his nickname. The third was Brand, a man with receding brown hair and nondescript features, an assistant to Hall.
The fourth man was dark-eyed, dark-haired, of medium height, and at present he looked so tired his skin had a withered, almost parchmentlike quality, shadowed around the sockets of his eyes and pinched near his mouth. The humor that was usually so clear in his expression was gone, as if stripped from him by shock.
“Come in, Reavley,” Shearing directed. “Sit down. You know everyone here.”
“Good morning, sir,” Matthew answered, acknowledging Admiral Hall. He glanced around the table. “Kittredge not here yet?” The answer was obvious, but he was looking for an explanation. He looked again at the dark man with the ravaged face. He was wearing civilian clothing, a shirt that looked crumpled and an old Harris tweed jacket, too warm for the time of year.
“Kittredge is not coming,” Shearing told him. “This is a closed meeting.”
Matthew was startled. Kittredge was one of three other men recruited to the SIS at the beginning of the war as a cryptographer. Before that he had been an academic at Cambridge. Language and codes were his specialties. Matthew took his seat in the place indicated, and waited for them to begin. He knew what he was here for; the fourth man, Ivor Chetwin, had just returned from Mexico. The United States and its neighbors were Matthew’s field of responsibility in SIS.
Of course Shearing did not know that Ivor Chetwin had once been a close friend of John Reavley, until profound differences over the morality of espionage work had divided them. It had driven John Reavley into the dislike and distrust of all intelligence work that had lasted until the evening he had telephoned Matthew to tell him of the Peacemaker’s document given him by Reisenburg. He had been murdered the next day. It was only Chetwin’s brilliance at gaining information, and his undoubted personal courage, that made it bearable to Matthew that they should work together.
Admiral Hall seemed to be in charge of the meeting. He was courteous to Shearing, but he deferred to no one. At the beginning of the war, on the night of August 5, 1914, Britain had sent out a ship that had picked up the transatlantic telephone cable, so all communication between Europe to America since then had had to be made by radio. Germany had routed its messages to its diplomatic staff in the United States and Mexico through various neutral countries, particularly Sweden. Naturally, it had used code.
That code had been captured by British Naval Intelligence, and the fact that it had been broken was one of the most closely guarded secrets. Any action based solely upon information gained that way would betray to the Germans that their diplomatic exchanges were known, and the code would instantly be changed. All its value to Britain would be lost. Secrecy was vital. The German assumption that their codes could never be broken also helped!
“The situation,” Hall prompted Chetwin.
“Even worse than the reports,” Chetwin replied, his voice gravelly with exhaustion from weeks of fitful sleep, poor food, and the constant harassment of moving from place to place, only a step ahead of suspicion and arrest. “The whole of Mexico is in chaos,” he went on. He spoke slowly, almost without emotion, as if it were exhausted out of him. “Zapata and Pancho Villa have gone crazy. They’re dancing in the presidential palace like so many apes. They have no control over anything. Armed men roam the countryside looting and killing. They steal cattle, grain, horses, anything that can be moved. Bodies swing from the trees like rotten fruit.”
No one interrupted him.
He ran his hand, neat and strong, over his brow. “There’s nothing left to eat. Villages have been razed to the
